First, Plommer shared that the paper’s corrections work is more focused on online than ever before:

Increasingly, in recent years, corrections’ priority has gone to online content, and I see no sensible alternative to this, because the digital database is the Guardian’s most accessible permanent archive, and one with instant global reach. This is where most people will see the original mistake, and where a corrected version stands the greatest chance of being spotted. Having the right version on the web also seems the best way to prevent us and others repeating an error in future stories.

The web is live, and impatient; corrections need to keep up. On our website’s corrections and clarifications page, a selection of online repairs is pulled together and steadily updated so that a rolling log is created throughout the day.

She explained that the paper’s print corrections column has primarily focused on correcting errors made in the print edition. However, that’s about to change (emphasis mine):

Enclosed in its finite space, the newspaper column is a window on to some of our correcting and clarifying. To date, it has mostly confined itself to making amends for errors published in the newspaper, on grounds that it would seem odd to explain web-only mistakes that lovers of the fish-wrap Guardian might never have clapped eyes on. This probably still makes sense, but from tomorrow, the exclusion zone will be breached so the paper column can point – in headline form – to some subjects corrected on guardian.co.uk. Word-for-word headlines should allow an easy web search, for anyone wanting to know more about what was corrected. The aim is to give a better taste of the work being done by many editorial departments to ensure an accurate record – and to make the column better reflect the Guardian’s range from newspaper to multimedia site.

Nice work by the paper to think about how it can spread its corrections between print and online, and help make readers aware of mistakes.

But that wasn’t the only news Plommer had to share:

Meanwhile, a new web page – entitled accuracy and standards – now brings together, under one digital roof, information on the guidelines, system of scrutiny, and other tools through which the Guardian and Observer aim to reinforce the business of getting things right, and being answerable when this objective is not met. It is found at www.guardian.co.uk/info/page/accuracy-and-standards.

The above link is a landing page that aggregates corrections from the Guardian and Observer, the readers editors columns, and lots of information about standards and policies at the papers.

The tweak to the printed corrections column and this new landing page demonstrate that the Guardian and Observer continue to think about how they can evolve and publicize their corrections. That’s one reason why they continue to be leaders in this field.

Oh, and I course need to mention that a correction was later added to Plommer’s column:

This article was amended on 28 October 2011. The original said that “the Guardian’s website was born in 1999″. This has been corrected because several Guardian sites were launched between 1995-1998. It was in 1999 that a unified and augmented site, Guardian Unlimited, was launched. The column above has been corrected, and an item will appear in the Corrections and clarifications column.

Note that the online correction specifies when it was added to the content. I see too few news organizations adding this to their online corrections.

His successor, Patrick B. Pexton, has now weighed in with a blog post that looks at recent errors in the paper, and also quotes an anonymous message from a former* staffer. From the message:

I have been reluctant to write this e-mail. But I can no longer hold my tongue. The quality of copy editing at the paper is abysmal. Yet again, while reading a story, I have found another error — a ‘they’ where it should have read ‘the’ — that literally made me stop reading the story and write this e-mail.

Unfortunately, it’s not a rare occurrence — countless stories and blogs with words left out or misspellings or grammatical errors. Is anybody reading what goes on up on the Web site or in the paper?

Pexton cites three causes of error:

First, mathematics is at play here: Fewer editors plus much more copy equals more mistakes. The Washington Post is not just a print publication anymore — far more copy, from stories to blogs, exists online than in print. The print edition is a fraction of what editors edit every day.

Second, copy editors (multiplatform editors, in today’s parlance) also now deal with material for mobile devices and tablet computers. Each of these four platforms — print, online, mobile, tablet — has different procedures and may require distinct headlines and captions; a story can be prepared by the copy editor not once but four times.

Third, mistakes occur more frequently online than in print, generally, because online copy goes through fewer editors. Stories headed into the newspaper go through more editors. But online errors are easier and faster to correct. Print is still forever. Readers take mistakes in print more seriously than online errors.

He ends with this: “Something has to be done to shake up the copy editing system at The Post so it doesn’t let mistakes like this weekend’s get published. It’s too important to the credibility of The Post.”

Looking back at what Alexander had written, I was reminded the paper had already shaken up its copy editing system. Alexander’s final column mentioned mistakes at the paper. After that was published, there was this response from Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli in a Q&A with readers back in January:

The ombudsman is right that there have been too many careless errors lately–typos, grammatical errors, silly factual mistakes. I don’t want to make excuses, because we shouldn’t tolerate these sorts of errors. But by way of explanation I will say that we have made a number of changes in our processes in the last couple of years and are putting in a new editing system that will further change workflows for editors.

So is the new editing system not fully in place? Is it in place and not working? Have things actually improved compared to a couple of years ago? I encourage Pexton to get some answers to these questions. (And for Post staffers to contact me or add a comment.)

Also: Check out Erik Wemple’s take on Pexton’s post.

*Correction October 25, 2011: I forgot to put the word “former” in front of the word “staffer” when referring to a message that had been sent to Post public editor Patrick B. Pexton. This gave the incorrect impression the message he was sent came from a current employee of the paper, rather than a former one. I added the word in the sentence. Thanks Doug!

The new ombudsman is Edward Schumacher-Matos.

1. Build Your Blog – Many ombudsmen, especially those at newspapers, write a regular column. This used to be the most visible, tangible benefit of an ombudsman. Going forward, the column can still exist, but it should not be the primary focus. Ombudsmen need to be more public and interactive in their role and deliver content with greater frequency. (Hey, we’re now in a real time world of news.) A blog is the best way to start moving in that direction. A survey of ONO members found that more of them now have a blog, which is good news. Though the next question is of course what you do with that blog. Well, ombudsmen should…

2. Curate the Conversation – That same survey of ombudsman highlighted the fact that this is a deliberative position. Ombuds try to take the long view on things; they are not firing off opinions and recommendations left and right. (Thus the appeal of a weekly column, or an even longer process of investigation.) As one survey respondent put it, “It takes a good bit of thinking to be fair.” Another comment made at the conference echoed this: “We can’t give instantaneous replies – we have to think and analyze.” But who says ombudsmen should only focus on their own opinion and deliberations? The reporting and other work done by their news organization results in a groundswell of opinion and reaction, and a good ombud will track this and pay attention to what people are saying.

A good ombud should also blog about what they see and hear. An ombudsman’s blog could be filled with pointers to content that is attracting a lot of reaction; it could supply a curated collection of interesting and notable comments from the organization’s website and elsewhere. Create Storifys of what people are saying on Twitter. Be a bridge between the content and reaction to it. Then use that same blog, and a column, to provide commentary and perspective. To hold the organization accountable. With this approach, suddenly the ombud becomes a valuable source of curation and newsgathering, as well as opinion. That’s a damn good way to demonstrate your value.

3. Make It Public – An ombudsman’s job involves answering a ton of e-mails and phone calls. They are constantly communicating with members of the public, which is a very important function. Yet few realize the value they bring in this respect. An ombudsman is in many ways the face of an organization because he has to respond to comments and questions. That’s not true for all reporters and editors. A great way to enhance the value of this role is to make these exchanges public. (Though people should have the right to request a private exchange, of course.) Each ombudsman’s blog should have a regular mailbag feature where questions are posed and answered in public. They should also call upon editors and reporters to respond to readers on the blog. It’s about having a conversation and providing a forum for readers. This could help bring in more traffic, which is another way to create value. On top of that, a public archive of questions and answers could form the basis of a useful FAQ-like database of questions and answers. This eliminates the need for an ombud to answer the same question over and over again. If a frequently asked question suddenly has a new or updated answer, he can just update with a new blog post to make that information public.

4. Report Like An Ombudsman (As Well As A Journalist) - Most government ombudsmen publish an annual or twice-a-year report. This report reviews the highs and lows of the department or area that they oversee, makes recommendations, and also provides important statistics and data. News ombudsmen should take a page from their government counterparts. Keep and publish relevant statistics about errors, accuracy and corrections. (Some already do this.) Keep data about the most praised and the most controversial stories. Make this data public, while also providing perspective and recommendations not offered in a weekly column. This report will be of value to both the organization and the public because it enhances accountability and transparency and fosters discussion (which could take place on the blog!).

5. Share Your Skills – A journalist who did a stint as an ombudsman at a city paper once told me that every journalist should have to spend time in that job because it will help them understand how their work can have an effect on people, and how to deal with the public. Rather than try to make everyone in a newsroom spend a day or two on the ombud beat, it’s more realistic to have ombudsmen offer training and guidance when it comes to handling criticism and feedback from the public. Journalists increasingly respond to the community in comments, on Twitter and in other venues. They need training to help do this in a respectful, productive way. Who better than an ombudsman to help them navigate these waters?

I’ve since learned what real, excruciating pain NPR triggered with its false news report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died, which was repeated on npr.org, e-mail alerts, Twitter and picked up by other news organizations.

NPR correspondent Ted Robbins is based in Tucson. He was at the scene Jan. 8 when his cell phone rang shortly after NPR aired at 2:01 p.m. EST that Giffords died. The call was a friend, who is also a friend of Giffords.

The friend was sitting outside the hospital operating room with Giffords’ mother Gloria, holding her hand.

“Please tell them to stop reporting she is dead,” he begged Robbins. “She is in surgery.”

Robbins immediately called NPR but was told NPR was sticking to the story since it had two sources.

Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, got a similar call. Simon and his family are close friends of Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly.

At 2:08, a distraught family member called: "Scott, where the hell is NPR getting that information?"

"The close family member is a huge NPR fan or was,” said Simon. “Until that moment, he found NPR more reliable than other news outlets. He had been told that Gabby was in surgery. But he was anxious, isolated, and wondered why NPR would report such a thing if it were not true.”

Simon phoned the NPR news desk and was told the information was based on "confirmation" from the Pima County Sheriff’s department and a congressional source.

He didn’t think that was good enough …

Simon sent these suggested operating principles to top management:

“There should be no room for doubt when a news organization declares someone dead. They should wait until the medical authorities directly involved declare death, or close family members announce it. There is simply no way that anyone else—not local police, not witnesses, not 'two governmental sources'—would be in a position to know for certain especially when there are now, between respiration and brain activity, at least a couple of medical gauges of death.”

– via How NPR Giffords' Mistake Hurt The Families, a blog post from NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard.

The holiday season is supposed to be a time of happiness, but there has been little cheer from readers upset about a chronic Post problem: a lack of quality control.

The past few years have seen a crescendo of complaints about typos, grammatical errors and minor factual mistakes. In recent weeks, a string of lapses has heightened reader despair.

For example, the Page One table of contents in last Sunday's Post referred readers to the Travel section inside the paper. But there was no Travel section. Nor were readers alerted to the change beyond a small editor's note a week earlier saying the section wouldn't appear the following Sunday. Travel Editor Joe Yonan acknowledged the misstep. That was little solace for readers such as Harry Seamen of Bedford, Pa., who complained of misspelled words and grammatical errors in addition to the missing Travel section. "It's almost like a pre-final edition of the paper got released," he wrote …

– via Readers fume over latest Post errors, a column from Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander.

Thanks Daniel!

… The Star published 328 corrections in 2010, down slightly from 347 in 2009. While no journalist is ever pleased about any errors, that’s less than one identified published error for every day the Star publishes. Not a bad track record given that we publish the equivalent of a book daily.

On the accuracy front, last year proved to be a substantial improvement over past years. We published 425 corrections in 2008; 497 in 2007 and the all-time high of 512 corrections in 2006.

Still, there were some doozies in 2010. As detailed in my May 22 column, a May 18 article reported a name of a young man gunned down in a gang murder. But the high-school student named in the Star had nothing to do with the incident and was very much alive — much to the relief of his mother, who informed me of this egregious error.

In June, while reporting on G8 security measures in Muskoka, the Star told readers that a local man “has a gun at the ready should protesters get by the army of police and soldiers scouring the brushes.” In fact, what the man had said in a jovial way was: “I’ve got an Easton 32 in the house.”

As reported in our immediate correction, the Easton 32 is a baseball bat, not a gun. The Star apologized to the man for this misunderstanding on the part of an embarrassed reporter who has some familiarity with baseball bats, having once swung a few for the Star’s team …

– via Our year in ‘misteaks,’ a column by Toronto Star public editor Kathy English.

… The Post has reversed its embarrassing inattention to correction requests. Since my initial column, section editors have received regular reminders about correction requests that have been pending for more than 14 days. Where a backlog of several hundred neglected requests once existed, the number now is only four. The database shows a handful of other pending requests that are being addressed and corrections likely will appear soon.

Following publication of my first column on March 22 of last year, Assistant Managing Editor Peter Perl successfully pushed the newsroom to whittle down the huge backlog of requests. The task of riding herd on corrections was subsequently passed to Senior Editor Milton Coleman, who started another push several months ago …

Coleman credited two veteran Post copy editors, Bill Walsh and Martha Murdock, with improving corrections to make them “more fulsome, clearer and more transparent.” That’s helpful to readers, who in the past often complained about Post corrections that made it impossible to know the original error.

Where the paper still needs to improve:

Readers periodically complain that their requests for corrections, typically e-mailed to corrections@washpost.com, are never acknowledged. And sometimes it takes too long to run a correction that should have appeared within days.

Sunday’s column is something of a follow up. It also revealed that at the end of November the Post had published “about 950 corrections” this year. Alexander began by explaining that the Post often takes weeks or months to publish corrections:

The Post’s internal policies say that when readers point out mistakes, the response should be “prompt.” But too often, reporters and editors move at a snail’s pace to correct errors.

Despite improvement, an analysis of Post corrections this year showed that reported errors routinely went uncorrected for weeks or even months. Many were indisputable and should have been corrected in the following day’s paper.

In the Internet age, this kind of tardiness can be especially damaging. The longer inaccurate information lives on, the greater the risk that it will spread far beyond The Post’s readership. Dawdling on errors also weakens the bond of trust with readers who took the trouble to report them. They become justifiably cynical about The Post’s commitment to accuracy.

Alexander is on point with his criticism. Corrections should not take weeks or months to appear. He cited several examples where the paper dragged its feet. Even more interestingly, he provided a bit of an insider’s view as to how the paper’s corrections process is supposed to work:

Each month, corrections “monitors” in Post news departments are e-mailed a statistical analysis of pending and approved requests. It arrives with a standard admonishment: “It is very important that monitors handle correction requests in a timely fashion.”

Rather than emailing this to the appointed monitors once a month, why doesn’t the paper create an internal corrections-request tracking system that’s similar to software bug trackers? (I’m an unpaid advisor to MediaBugs, a Knight Foundation-funded project aiming to build something along these lines, albeit for public, rather than internal, use.) A system like this could provide automated alerts that make sure the monitors know when they’re falling behind. Also, the senior editorial people responsible for tracking corrections would be able to see which requests are still in the queue. An email once a month simply isn’t enough.

That said, a Post senior editor also raised a few other issues:

Senior Editor Milton Coleman said that an increased workload for editors, coupled with organizational changes and the temporary relocation of staffers during a months-long newsroom renovation, have caused “large gaps” in the corrections process.

But ultimately, he said, the remedy is that “someone has to be tasked with following up on a regular basis” to see that correction requests are being quickly handled.

These are valid problems, but there’s a larger point here: the Post’s internal corrections process isn’t scalable or adaptable. Some staffers get laid off, take buyouts or are reassigned, and the whole thing grinds to a near-halt. That’s not a good system.

Coleman told Alexander that’s he’s been tasked with helping improve the way things work. I suggest he step back from the micro-level issues and examine whether the paper could create a new, scalable process that enforces a higher level of accountability.

Crack the whip on people all you want, but I think the Post’s system/process, or lack thereof, is failing the paper.

When the Sentinel tightened its financial belt back in June, it lost a wealth of seasoned veterans, many of them editors. Those journalists not only wrote headlines and captions. They also scrutinized the work of reporters — correcting spelling, straightening out syntax, double-checking facts — before publication.
With fewer people to do that now, less of that important work gets done, and the result is more published errors.

Yesterday, the ombudsman of the Washington Post wrote basically the same column:

…Growing numbers of readers are contacting the ombudsman to complain about typos and small errors.

"As a virtually lifelong subscriber, I am disheartened by the increasingly poor quality of the editing of The Post," wrote Richard Murphy of Alexandria. If typos can’t be caught by a spell-checker, "then The Post should restore a couple of copy editor positions. You have cut that staff too much."

The Post’s copy editors are among the best I’ve worked with during nearly four decades in the newspaper business. But they’ve been badly depleted by staff cuts as the money-losing paper struggles to control costs. Those who remain are stretched thin while The Post expands to a 24-hour news operation in print and online.

Between early 2005 and mid-2008, the number of full-time copy editors dropped from about 75 to 43 through buyouts or voluntary departures. It has declined further since then, but Post managers won’t provide precise figures beyond saying that six took a recent buyout offer. The need is so critical that most are being hired back on contract through at least the end of the year, and part-timers are taking up some of the slack.

Copy editors are the unsung heroes of newsrooms. Unknown to the public, and often underappreciated by their colleagues, they’re the last line of defense against a correction or, worse, a libel suit…

"By definition, you’ll see more errors when there’s reduced staffing," said Bill Walsh, the A-section copy desk chief. On a typical weeknight a few years ago, Walsh said, the three copy desks handling national, foreign and business news could rely on perhaps 20 editors. Those desks have since been combined into one desk, headed by Walsh. Today, he said, "there are some shifts where I’m looking at seven or eight people total."…

These papers are by no means the only ones experiencing a spike in errors due to the loss of bodies on the copy desk. Adding to the problem is the fact that the move online means papers are churning out more content than ever before. Yet copy editors — and magazine fact checkers — are being shown the door.

Carl Sessions Stepp examined how some newsrooms are coping with this challenge is his recent article, "The Quality-Control Quandary,” It’s a must-read. I fear, though, that few organizations are rethinking their quality control process and means of verification. They’re just trying to do more with less. It’s a recipe for disaster.

I looked at this issue in a recent essay I wrote for Harvard’s Niemen Neiman Reports:

For more than 100 years, one of the most recognizable slogans in journalism has been “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Lately, The New York Times motto is being challenged by the familiar phrase, “do more with less.” This new saying was, in fact, the theme of the World Editors Forum scheduled for March, but the event had to be cancelled “due to the impact of the global financial downturn on newspaper companies.”

News organizations are shedding employees. Those that remain are expected to pick up the slack and also push ahead with digital initiatives. Included in the exodus are valuable copyeditors—the people in whose encyclopedic brains reside a lot of what prevents errors from surfacing in stories. The few, the proud—and disappearing—magazine fact checkers are also being told to grab their World Almanacs and Book of Facts and move along.

Accuracy is a huge journalistic challenge. When reporters are asked to take on more work while the newsroom’s same fallible processes and error-prone technologies remain in place, the result will undoubtedly be a further downward slide in quality. More errors will be followed by more apologies and more corrections. And this is happening at a critical time for journalism—a time when consumers are being asked by journalists using digital media to lend support to their newsgathering mission…

… Generally, the Star believes that unpublishing is a serious act as it erases the online history of the Star’s journalism. The Star’s policy on this states that while we indeed take seriously concerns of inaccuracy and will correct articles online, just as we do in the newspaper, we do not unpublish articles from our websites. This policy here is similar to that of other major newspapers, including the Washington Post, The New York Times and the Guardian.
If the Star ascertains that a mistake has been published, we correct it. Online, that means editing the text and also appending notes to the articles to tell readers that a correction has been made.
“Just as in print, the Star stands behind what it publishes online. Our purpose is to disclose information, not to hide information because it makes someone unhappy,” says Neil Sanderson, the Star’s assistant managing editor, digital. “If things started disappearing from our websites, readers might suspect that we were trying to conceal an error.
“As well, the stories that we publish are part of the historical record of our city, our province and our country,” he said. “To remove these stories from our archive would leave holes in our history.”

Derek Donovan, readers’ representative at the Kansas City Star, dedicated his end of year column to thanking readers for helping the paper correct errors. Excerpt:

One of my most important jobs at The Kansas City Star is tracking the corrections that run on Page A-2, and I was recently reminded how vital a role readers play in that process …
While appending a correction last Friday, I remembered vividly the caller who’d pointed out the mistake — dollar amounts for police badges that didn’t make sense as written. I then flipped through the previous month’s corrections tally and realized just how many of them came directly from readers, many of whom had no personal interest other than a desire to see The Star set the record straight …
The great collective wisdom of readers comes from the thousands of specialists who follow the news related to their specific areas of interest. I know I can always rely on military buffs to pick apart inaccurate descriptions of the patches on soldiers’ uniforms, or proud moms and dads who let me know when a school has sent in an incomplete team roster or honor roll. No mistake is truly trivial.
So I offer a sincere thanks to you, the readers. You’re directly responsible for alerting me to a huge percentage of those errors that result in corrections (435 so far this year). The Star is obviously far from perfect, but your attention to detail makes it better.

Frustrated by the inability to do anything about the high cost of fuel or groceries and the egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk South Texas heat, let’s turn to something you and I have the ability to change for the better:
Making the San Antonio Express-News the most trusted, respected and accurate source of news and information in this region.
That high-minded language, by the way, is right out of the Preamble to our new Ethics and Practices policy.
One way to gain respect and credibility is to admit it when you’ve done wrong. To that end, the Express-News publishes corrections on Page 2A, under a headline “Setting it straight,” Many of the corrections you see there are reported by readers…
Last year, the newspaper published 494 Setting it Straights, about 41 per month.
This year, through May, corrections are down by an average of 10 per month. In only one month, January, have Setting it Straights even hit the 40 mark. But it’s early. Last Thursday we published eight corrections on 2A, the most in a long spell.
And while we ran nearly 500 Setting it straights in 2007 and are closing in on 200 so far this year, that’s not to say that journalists here – or South Texas readers – catch or admit every error…
The Express-News has long held that corrections shouldn’t repeat the error. For example, don’t say: “The Missions beat Frisco, 3-1, Saturday night, not, 3-2, as was reported on Page 10C of Sports on Sunday.” Instead, say: “The Missions’ score, as reported on Page 10C Sunday, was incorrect. The Missions won, 3-1.
The new ethics code allows for flexibility in writing corrections, designed to clarify mistakes for readers, rather than leave them wondering what was wrong…

In July of last year, Joel Charlebois, a Toronto resident, caught a man trying to break into his home. While trying to escape, the man fell from a second floor deck. He ended up breaking a leg and couldn’t complete his getaway. Charlebois called the police and then proceeded to take pictures of the man. Torontoist has the photos; Charlebois’ Flickr stream is here.

In a post on Flickr, Charlebois explains what happened next:

While waiting for the police and ambulance to arrive, I took photos of the burglar as he lay on the ground below. A newsman from Citytv also came to the scene. I refused his request for an interview. As he was poking around the property, I asked him to leave. We spoke briefly — he was nice enough; it’s the media that I find objectionable. I mentioned that I had taken pictures of the perpetrator and was looking forward to posting them on my Flickr site. He was interested in seeing them, so I provided him with a card. I left that afternoon for a weekend in Montreal. When I returned home, a friend showed me his recording of the news story which is when I discovered that Citytv had lifted my photos from my Flickr site for their broadcast.

The photos were aired on CablePulse24, a 24-hour local news station operated by CityTV. The station did not credit Charlebois as the photographer, and it did not contact him for permission prior to airing the photos. Charlebois registered a complaint with the station, writing:

The story that was broadcast on CityTV and CP24 (and presumably streamed on CP24.com, as well) included my photographs of the suspect as he lay on the ground below. The material was stolen from my Flickr site without my permission and without crediting me, for commercial use and your sole financial gain.

The station replied and said Charlebois had given verbal permission to use the photos by handing the reporter a business card and saying his photos would be on Flickr. Obviously, that doesn’t explain why the station didn’t credit Charlebois for the photos.

Unsatisfied with the reply, Charlebois filed a complaint with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a “non-governmental organization created by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) to administer standards established by its members, Canada’s private broadcasters.”

A CBSC panel found that the station violated “Article 11 regarding Intellectual Property of the RTNDA -The Association of Electronic Journalists of Canada RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics.” It reads:

Plagiarism is unacceptable. Broadcast journalists will strive to honour the intellectual property of others, including video and audio materials.

It’s interesting to see plagiarism mentioned in this example. The station downloaded (copied) Charlebois’ photos and then broadcast them without offering proper credit. That certainly seems like a form of plagiarism, though Charlebois avoided the p-word and simply called the station thieves. (For another, different example of visual plagiarism, see here and here.)

In its decision, the CBSC panel addressed the issue of “fair dealing” (known as “fair use” in the U.S.). This, in the words of the panel, offers “an exception … to the restrictive demands of copyright protection” for those engaged in news reporting. But one cornerstone of fair dealing is that news organizations must respect the copyright of others by offering credit to the copyright holder. That’s the “fair” part of the equation.

As a resolution, the CBSC has ordered CablePulse24 to air this statement twice during prime time:

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has found that CablePulse 24 breached Article 11 of the Radio-Television News Directors Association – The Association of Electronic Journalists’ Code of Ethics in its broadcast of a news report of a bungled burglary on July 25, 2007. As a part of its coverage of the story, CP24 included three still photographs of the injured burglar without providing any credit to the photographer, whose identity was known to the broadcaster. By failing to provide that accreditation, the broadcaster has failed to honour the intellectual property rights of the photographer, contrary to the provisions of Article 11 of the RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics.

Note that the statement does not mention Charlebois by name, nor does it require an apology by the station. Torontoist spoke to Charlebois to get his reaction:

Charlebois is ambivalent about the decision: he told Torontoist that he’s most concerned over credit—all that he wanted—because the statement that City must read makes no mention of his name. “This announcement mentions where [City] wronged,” he told us, “but it does not set things right if they continue to withhold credit for the work.” Even if they don’t say his name, however, Charlebois does find one thing particularly rewarding: that this was the first time the CBSC has called on a panel to resolve an issue of plagiarism under the Code of Ethics, and the resulting decision sets a precedent for news organizations around the country. “These matters,” Charlebois told us, “require discussion as traditional media wrestle with the worthy opponent it is finding in alternative/online media.”

It’s remarkable that Charlebois still won’t receive credit for his photographs.

Prior to my presentation, we sat down for an interview during which English told me that the paper was embarking on several accuracy-related projects. One was to build a corrections database to track the paper’s errors; another was to update the paper’s corrections style.

English was nice enough to write a column about my presentation and book. Now it’s my turn to interview her. We spoke via email about the Star’s new corrections style, how the paper encourages readers to report errors, and whether the phrase “regret the error” is a useful addition to a correction.

*Editor’s Note: An unfinished version of this post was mistakenly published on Wednesday morning. As a result, the sentence “The Star is Canada’s highest circulation daily, and one of very few media outlets in the country that has a full-time public editor/ombudsman” left out the word “few.” Thanks to David and Steve for spotting that mistake. Update: I’ve also fixed a few typos that didn’t cause any factual errors, including a misspelling of the word “interview” in the headline (forgot the “r”). Thanks to Eric and Aldous. On with the Q&A…

Who decided that the paper’s corrections style needed to be updated?
When I took on the role of public editor at the Star last May, I initiated a review of the paper’s corrections policy and practices. This was approved by my boss, publisher, Jagoda Pike, with the full co-operation of editor-in-chief Fred Kuntz. That’s not to suggest that the paper did not have vigorous corrections policies and practices in place. My predecessor, Sharon Burnside, did an excellent job of keeping the Star accountable to its readers through corrections and the Star has long had an accuracy and corrections policy.

I came to the Star from the Globe and Mail where I had served on an “integrity committee” that had looked at the paper’s corrections policies and I had put a lot of work into researching best practices in newspaper corrections. It seemed appropriate to bring what I had learned to my new challenge at the Star.

As well, the goal of the public editor bringing more accountability to the Star’s corrections process through a tracking system that would help the newsroom learn from published errors was very clearly part of the mandate I took on with this role. I am happy to say I report to a publisher who has strong views on this newspaper’s responsibility for accuracy and the need for accountability for accuracy. I could hardly launch a system for tracking errors without fully understanding and reviewing the Star’s Accuracy and Corrections policy.

What caused the change?
We haven’t significantly changed the way corrections are written, beyond deciding not to print “the Star regrets the error” in all corrections and trying to be consistent about what should be included in corrections.

The most significant change is the presentation. Corrections are now published under a “Corrections” label, rather than with individual headlines. Our policy calls for all news corrections to run in a prominent position on Page A2 (or 3) and corrections for Sports, Business, Living and Entertainment to run in the same location in those sections. This is not a change from longstanding practice at the Star.

When you sat down to think about the new style, what were the main things you wanted to achieve?
The most important goal of our corrections is to serve the reader — and the record — by stating the correct information so that readers clearly know what is accurate. Corrections should be clear, concise and direct and indicate to readers what we got wrong. Our style aims to first state the correct fact and then to provide the broad context of what was wrong without necessarily repeating the error. We don’t follow the correct information with the general statement of “incorrect information was published” because we think we should inform readers about what went wrong. They should not have to guess at what we are correcting.

Corrections must also include the calendar date the original article was published (not the day of the week because that becomes meaningless online) and the brief context of that article.

As well, corrections had traditionally referred to an error in a “story” and I changed that to “article”. I think article is a better word for newspaper readers because “story” could create (unconscious) connotations of fiction. To me, article more clearly denotes fact, which is what we provide to readers.

We also had much debate about whether to ascribe blame in published corrections by denoting whether the mistake was “due to an editing error.” (Or, “due to a reporting error.”) The policy here has long been that publishing the Star is a team endeavor and we do not publicly ascribe blame for errors. We have not changed that. However, our new Accuracy Tracker system will help us to learn much more internally about the cause of errors.

What was the process for creating the new style?
The review of the Star’s accuracy and corrections policy was part of an overall Star “Credibility Committee” that is currently revising and updating the Star’s Policy and Ethics manual to ascertain that newsroom policies reflect the realities of 21st century/multimedia journalism. I headed the accuracy and corrections committee of nine editors and reporters. This committee looked at all aspects of the Star’s corrections policy and practices, in the light of what is considered best practice in North American newsrooms. We looked at online corrections, what we correct and the wording and placement of corrections. I then drafted an updated policy, which was approved by the Credibility Committee (co-chaired by me and the editor-in-chief). It will be published in a new manual in coming months.

This process took place over several months and throughout, I tried to provide information to the newsroom about best practices in corrections by posting a number of research articles on the newsroom intranet. Inviting you to the Star to speak about accuracy and corrections was also part of my initiative to try to spark more discussion about this important topic.

Some of the new corrections repeat the incorrect information (“A recipe for Bourbon Apple Cake misstated the amount of butter that should be used in Step 2. It is one and a half sticks, not cups…”) while others don’t (“The potential savings from driving a highly fuel efficient hybrid car (after 96,000 kms and if fuel reached European-like gas prices of $2 a litre) would be approximately $900. An incorrect savings estimate was published…”). How do you choose when to include the incorrect information?
You are right. While our goal is consistency and my preferred corrections style is to state the correct information first, sometimes that simply does not best serve the reader and it makes more sense to start out by stating what was wrong (the New York Times style) and then provide the correct information. We do this sparingly and only after determining that our standard style doesn’t work best. I do believe that stating the correct information is the most important goal of a correction and it should be the “lead”, but I reserve the right to alter that if it doesn’t clearly communicate to readers. Consistency is important but sometimes the “formula” doesn’t work.

It appears as though the new corrections have ditched the phrase “The Star regret the error.” Why was that no longer needed?
Our committee gave serious consideration to dropping this sentence that has long been included at the end of all corrections in the Star. I like the polite civility of it, but there was general agreement that this phrase has come to sound somewhat satirical (please don’t take this wrong, but I wonder if that is a result of your website making the phrase “Regret the Error” sound somewhat insincere when it appears in print in the daily newspaper.) I also looked at the style of other newspapers and “Regret the Error” is not generally used these days.

I don’t think that sentence was particularly meaningful or significant to readers. I also think it’s a given that the Star regrets all of our errors; the fact that we are addressing them in a published correction is evident of that and so too is our move to track errors to try to learn from, and minimize them. That’s not to say there won’t be occasions when we do explicitly express our regret.

Have you received any reader feedback about the new corrections style?
None whatsoever.

Do more readers read the printed corrections than those published online, or vice versa?
I expect more readers read the corrections published in the newspaper.

What kind of traffic does your online corrections page get?
I spoke to our web editor and she tells me the traffic to that page is almost nil.

Apart from the writing of the corrections, have any other things changed, such as placement etc.?
The most significant change for the reader is that we no longer run headlines with corrections. The headlines took up a lot of space and essentially could not say much but repeat the content of the correction. I looked at corrections in numerous other papers and saw that most run corrections under a “Corrections” label, without individual headlines and it made sense to do the same here.

We’ve also started publishing information on the Page 2 Index to indicate the Star’s commitment to accuracy and tell readers how to report a possible error. This is in addition to the online initiatives to guide readers to how to report possible errors.

The most significant change for Star journalists is that we now monitor corrections in the Toronto Star Accuracy Tracker, an online form that helps the Star track and monitor corrections and reasons for errors. The purpose is to help the newspaper learn from mistakes so that we can continually strive for higher levels of editorial excellence. It requires that department heads, in consultation with staff, provide the required information about the reason and origin of errors to the public editor’s office following publication of a correction. Here’s a link to the public editor column I wrote about this.

There is a little link next to every online story that allows people to “Report typo or correction.” How long has this been in place, and where do those emails go? How often do readers use it?
I believe this was put in place by my predecessor, Sharon Burnside, working with our online team. All of these emails go directly to the public editor’s mailbox which is monitored by my office (myself and Public Editor Associate, Joan Vander Doelen) from 9 a.m. to about 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. We don’t routinely monitor during nights and weekends, but I usually take a look each night and on Saturday and Sunday to determine if there is any major issue in need of correction.

Readers use this throughout the day — it varies from day to day of course, but on average, we probably receive about 30-40 emails daily through this link. The issues can be relatively minor, such as typos in articles that have been just posted to thestar.com, or can be significant requests for correction to articles that were published in the newspaper and online and that require significant amounts of time and effort to verify. We investigate all of these reader emails and take appropriate action to correct when necessary and make sure the correction is followed through online, in print and in the Star’s archives.

Any more corrections-related changes planned for the future?
The next step of this process is to overhaul our online Corrections page and to link all online corrections to the online articles they correct. Our online corrections policy calls for this and other measures to create more transparency about corrections and changes to online articles. We still have much work ahead to create a consistent correction environment in the newspaper and online, but we do have a clear sense of direction on this.

I’m also looking forward to what we learn from our Accuracy Tracker about why some errors occur and what systemic problems might be responsible for these. Our goal is to be a leader in newspaper accuracy and corrections practices and I’ll be continuing to research best practices throughout the industry to determine how we can improve the accuracy and accountability of Canada’s largest newspaper. Our readers deserve nothing less.

Has your organization recently changed its corrections policy, or enacted a new accuracy-related program? Email me so we can do an interview.

The sourcing and fact checking process for stories on the BBC News website must be addressed by management, the BBC trust Editorial Standards Committee has recommended.
The committee made the suggestions as part of its response to a complaint about an article on the site, which pointed to inaccuracies in the report on Congressman Joseph P Kennedy II’s marriage to Sheila Rauch.
During the complaints procedure, the online news team conceded to oversimplifying the story and admitted that this could mislead the reader.

From the committee’s findings:

• The article had been fundamentally flawed and the complainant had provided useful and accurate information to assist the web team in correcting the story.
• The web team should have acted more quickly in its responses to the complainant to ensure the story was corrected sooner than it was.
• The wider issue of sourcing and checking stories for the news website was something for BBC management to address.
• [The committee] would write to BBC management to request it reviews its policies as to the sourcing and checking of material facts within articles prior to publication on the BBC website.